Ashley Church
Digital creator
The idea of a genuinely centrist political party that draws intelligently from both the left and the right is attractive.
Such a party could combine environmental responsibility with economic realism. It could appeal to younger voters concerned about housing, climate, infrastructure and the future without requiring them to buy into the full ideological programme of Labour or the Greens.
A genuine blue-green party could also potentially work with either National or Labour because both political traditions would be honestly and substantially represented within it.
New Zealand has room for that kind of party and it is precisely the space the Opportunity Party is now seeking to occupy.
How TOP got here
TOP began in 2016 as the personal political project of economist and philanthropist Gareth Morgan.
Morgan built the party around unconventional ideas such as a land tax and a Universal Basic Income – but his abrasive public style and appetite for controversy frequently overwhelmed the policy discussion. As a result, TOP won just 2.4 per cent of the party vote in 2017 and failed to enter parliament.
After Morgan departed, the party entered a long period of drift, cycling through several leaders, repeatedly relaunching itself and continuing to promote many of the same basic policies. But it never came close to winning representation. It fell to 1.5 per cent in 2020 and recovered only slightly to 2.2 per cent in 2023.
Then, in late 2025, TOP was relaunched again – this time under Qiulae Wong. Wong came from the sustainability, B-Corp, KPMG and climate-advocacy world. She had no previous TOP membership or political history and became leader after applying through an advertised selection process.
Under her leadership, TOP has assembled 43 candidates across 43 electorates, adopted a polished ‘teal’ identity and has been presenting itself as a professional, evidence-based and politically independent party that could work with either National or Labour.
That pitch is resonating. TOP is being promoted as fresh, intelligent, moderate and potentially disruptive by an adoring mainstream media and is being presented as the genuine blue-green party New Zealand has been missing. As a result, it recently registered 4.6 per cent in a poll, placing it within sight of parliament.
Until recently, most of the discussion around TOP has been based on impressions, individual policies, media profiles and occasional observations about its personnel.
That has now changed.
The report that changes the picture
Over the last few days I have come into possession of an extensive report compiled by an independent researcher based in Taranaki. The report is explosive, not because it contains secret documents or leaked internal communications, but because it brings together, in one place, a large body of publicly available information that no media organisation or commentator has previously assembled in this way.
It examines TOP’s origins, leadership, management structure, funding, institutional relationships, policies and all 43 of its announced candidates.
It places the party’s public claims alongside the backgrounds, careers, affiliations and stated beliefs of the people it has selected to represent it.
And when all of that information is put together, the conclusion is difficult to escape.
TOP is not the centrist party it presents itself to be. It is a strongly left-wing party wearing centrist clothing. A trojan horse designed to deliver centrist votes to the left. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
This report takes this discussion beyond suspicion, impression or political instinct. It lays bare the structure of the organisation, the political ecosystem from which it has been built and the direction in which it would almost certainly move if it entered parliament.
This is deception in practice
To be clear, the report does not identify an internal TOP strategy document that says that the party deliberately set out to disguise a left-wing vehicle as a centrist one.
But it doesn’t need to. Intention and effect are not necessarily the same thing and, whatever TOP’s original intention, the party is now deceiving voters in practice by presenting itself as balanced between left and right when its candidates, policies, management and institutional relationships overwhelmingly point in one direction.
There is a remote possibility that this has all happened by accident and that TOP’s teal branding, centrist rhetoric, candidate recruitment, Labour connections, policy platform and likely coalition direction all aligned by coincidence.
But the much more likely explanation is that TOP has been deliberately re-engineered as a political vehicle capable of attracting voters who care about environmental protection, housing affordability and political reform, but who would hesitate to vote Labour or Green.
The candidate list is the first smoking gun
Political parties can write policies and slogans designed to appeal to almost anyone.
Their candidates are often more revealing.
The Taranaki report examined all 43 TOP candidates announced so far and found that roughly 38 of them come from overlapping left-wing professional and institutional networks.
Stuff has since independently noted that the list leans heavily towards academics and professionals.
But the report goes much further than that. The issue isn’t simply that TOP’s candidates are highly qualified. It is where they come from, what they’ve worked on and which political ecosystem they inhabit.
The list is heavily populated by people from:
- Environmental and conservation organisations
- Climate activism
- Treaty and indigenous-rights policy
- Central and local government
- Trade unions
- Publicly funded science
- International development
- Harm-reduction advocacy
- Public health
- B-Corp and corporate sustainability networks
One candidate from one of these sectors would prove nothing.
Five or six could be coincidence.
Roughly 38 out of 43 is a pattern.
Among the most revealing candidates identified in the report is Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, chief executive of WWF New Zealand and a former senior Department of Conservation official who played a leading role in producing He Puapua. Her Cambridge doctoral work focused on Treaty law, indigenous rights and legal pluralism. She was appointed to a working group connected with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and has spoken publicly about her pride in the He Puapua report.
Another candidate, Jessica Hammond has worked in long-term strategic policy at Te Puni Kōkiri and previously worked with the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria during its Treaty process.
Finn Liley came through the School Strike for Climate movement before progressing through TOP’s youth organisation into parliamentary candidacy.
Bianca Beebe sought Green Party candidacy before being recruited by TOP. Her background includes sex-worker advocacy, drug harm reduction and campaigns to decriminalise sex work.
Ben Wylie-van Eerd is a PSA union delegate, former Callaghan Innovation scientist and public campaigner against the current government’s science policies.
Blair Smith is a paramedic and union delegate.
Rachel Ward says she was motivated to stand because of what she describes as the current coalition government’s environmental failures.
These people are entitled to their beliefs – that isn’t the issue. The issue is whether a party built overwhelmingly from this political and institutional world can honestly describe itself as balanced between left and right.
It can’t.
A genuine blue-green centrist party would contain an obvious and substantial mix of people from both political traditions. TOP doesn’t. Its candidate base is overwhelmingly drawn from the institutional left and extreme left.
The Labour connection is the second smoking gun
The report also highlights TOP’s general manager, Iain Lees-Galloway. Lees-Galloway is a former union organiser, Labour MP and cabinet minister in Jacinda Ardern’s government. He served in parliament for 12 years and held the immigration and workplace relations portfolios. He now occupies the central operational role in the party.
That gives TOP access to Labour political networks, parliamentary experience, campaign knowledge, organised-labour relationships and deep familiarity with the public-service world.
On its own, that fact wouldn’t prove that TOP is a party of the left. But it doesn’t stand alone. It sits beside a candidate list filled with Treaty specialists, environmental campaigners, public-sector policy professionals, union delegates and other figures drawn from left-wing institutions.
TOP have countered this claim by pointing to former National MP Dame Jackie Blue as proof that it reaches across the political divide. But, as the report details, Blue left National over pay equity policy – a staple of extreme left-wing ideology. As such, she represented the socially liberal wing of the old National Party, not its conservative or economically orthodox base. Her presence gives TOP a useful National pedigree but it doesn’t create political balance in the way suggested.
Another revealing fact uncovered in the report is that major environmental organisations that boycotted National’s Blue-Greens forum attended TOP’s Teal Hui instead. Organisations reveal their political relationships through where they choose to show up and that decision says more about TOP’s real institutional position than any number of claims about centrism.
TOP policies are the third smoking gun
If the candidates reveal where TOP comes from, the policies reveal where it intends to go.
The report’s analysis of TOP’s Tax Reset is particularly important. TOP proposes a Citizen’s Income of up to $370 a week for almost every eligible adult, funded through an annual Land Value Tax of 1.75 per cent on urban land. The party claims that this would make 70 per cent of New Zealanders better off, leave another 20 per cent broadly unchanged and generate around $4 billion a year after the Citizen’s Income had been funded.
However, Stuff reported that someone living in a median-value Auckland property could face an annual Land Value Tax bill of around $10,800. TOP have admitted that they see this as a mechanism to drive property prices down by between 10 and 15 per cent over several years.
The report also draws together the wider policy programme, which includes:
- Drug-possession decriminalisation
- Raising Youth Court jurisdiction to the age of 25
- Treaty-based devolution of health and justice services, backed by resources and autonomy
- Agricultural emissions pricing
- Stronger powers for the Climate Change Commission
- Greater regulation of early childhood education
- Full teacher pay parity
Not all of TOPs policies are regressive – but the strong overall flavour is redistributive, interventionist and institutionally left-wing. It combines Green environmental goals, Labour-style Treaty-based institutional change, harm-reduction social policy and greater state direction of the economy.
The coalition claim doesn’t survive scrutiny
TOP says it could work with either National or Labour. But the report tests that claim against the party’s actual policies and personnel.
Consider what a National-led government would have to accept to secure TOP’s support:
- A near-universal Citizen’s Income
- A 1.75 per cent annual Land Value Tax
- Lower property prices as an explicit objective
- Deferred tax claims against retirees’ estates
- Free public transport
- Drug decriminalisation
- Youth Court jurisdiction to 25
- Treaty-based devolution of public services
- Agricultural emissions pricing
- Stronger environmental regulation
- A much larger state role in capital formation and infrastructure
These aren’t minor differences. They cut across tax, property rights, welfare, justice, Treaty policy, farming, transport, energy and the size of the state. For TOP to support National, either TOP would have to abandon much of its programme or National would have to accept policies fundamentally at odds with its political base.
TOP counters this by claiming that it’s policies are ‘up for negotiation’ – but by comparison to National, a coalition with Labour-Green-TOP would require almost no compromise.
- The candidate networks overlap.
- The environmental priorities overlap.
- The Treaty commitments overlap.
- The public sector instincts overlap.
- The justice and harm-reduction policies overlap.
- The appetite for redistribution and state intervention overlaps.
As such, TOP’s claim that it is equally available to either bloc is disingenuous and dishonest. Its natural destination is a Labour-Green-led government.
Why the disguise works
The strategy works because there is a real political gap. Many New Zealanders care about environmental protection, housing affordability and long-term planning, but would never vote Green.
TOP gives those voters a way to support much of the same political direction in a different package. It directs our attention away from extreme left-wing policies with words such as evidence, innovation, consensus, systems thinking and long-term decision-making.
And it says it can work with National.
That may work to deceive voters on the campaign trail – but it will never happen in practice.
TOP has done a great job of presenting itself as the sensible face of politics – but it is a trojan horse for the extreme left.
A vote for TOP isn’t politically neutral.
It is a vote to strengthen Labour and the Greens…
This article was originally published by ashleychurch.com.
